One reason Leach will always be a poor recruiter is he will never be a HC coach at an elite program with a fertile base.
Texas Tech had to compete with OU, Texas, TCU, Nebraska (when they were still good), TAMU, and national recruiting powers like OSU, ND, some SEC teams, and even Miami (at one time). Washington State has to share a smaller set of D1 players with Washington and Oregon, and other PAC schools. USC poached a few top players from the PNW when Carroll was HC.
The other reason is he’s a nut job.
Price and Erickson were good recruiters by WSU standards for their eras. The HC before Erickson was decent as well, and he actually recruited most of the players Erickson won with in 1988. Erickson was more X/O guy than recruiter, as we learned in Miami.
Erickson’s poor recruiting at The U makes me dismiss the notion Leach would ‘kill at Miami’.